


Doppelganger

by thewintertrash



Series: Mnemonic [4]
Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Memory Loss, Past Torture, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-22
Updated: 2016-02-22
Packaged: 2018-05-22 16:38:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6086959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewintertrash/pseuds/thewintertrash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>dop·pel·gäng·er (n.) 1. someone who looks like someone else; 2. a ghost that looks like a living person.</p><p>-</p><p>In the time it took for the knife to reach his Handler, the soldier became aware of three things:</p><p>1.	His body, besides his left arm, was mostly paralyzed.<br/>2.	He couldn’t run.<br/>3.	The punishment for this was going to be unbelievable.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Doppelganger

**Author's Note:**

> yIKES GUYS this part kicked me right in the ass. Bucky was being so difficult to write ajsfkkshgl i'm so sorry this took so long.
> 
> BUT, while writing this i realized that since Bucky and Steve were born in the 80's, that means ALL the 90's and 00's references. also, i've already made it canon that Steve spends a lot of time on the internet, so that means he's a huge memelord and no one can tell me otherwise
> 
> and if anyone is wondering how long this is gonna be..... probably another six or seven parts lmAO I'M SORRY THIS HAS GOTTEN SO OUT OF HAND at least i have it planned out mostly?? so....
> 
> (and yes i made kate bishop asian fight me)

He was dead. He was alive. He was the soldier. He was the prisoner. He was all of these. He was nothing at all.

In the cell he was dead. He breathed in and out, slowly, counting each one until his vision blurred, and then started over. The body breathed, but the body was dead. It had been killed over, and over, and over again.

In the cell he was alive. He rotted piece by piece, slowly, counting each second until the world went dark, and then started over. The corpse rotted, but the corpse was alive. It had been brought back to life over, and over, and over again.

He remembered, but he didn’t, not really; the taste the shards of glass on his tongue couldn’t be compared to the wine the glass once held. He swallowed the pieces and bared his bloody teeth. He couldn’t taste the glass any more, but the lacerations they left behind told the story better than his perforated lungs could string together. His insides had been scraped out, discarded, filled with something worse and something better and something out of nightmares. They sutured his skin back together and with each stitch sealed the scars, buried the shards of glass so deep that he would have to rip himself open to find them again.

He didn’t know if it was worth it, but then man in the alley called him ‘Bucky,’ and suddenly he didn’t have a choice in the matter. The shards sliced deeper through his skin, cutting into his bones and exposing the maggots that infested his brain. He dragged the broken body along, trying to hold it together where it had been shredded apart. They hadn’t stitched him together as tightly as they thought, and the body shattered open piece by rotten, bloody piece.

~*~

His intel had been bad. His target had better defenses than had been relayed to him. _The Black Widow and Hawkeye,_ his brain supplied, along with a short, concise summary of their battle styles, strengths, and weaknesses in a monotone voice with some sort of loud frequency distorting it, like when speakers are about to blow out but you turn them all the way up anyway.

The mission. He was losing focus. His brain supplied the layout of Borough Hall and three different possible exits. He took the one that would lead to the side alley, his target’s pleading turning to white noise beyond the absolute need to complete his mission. Another spot of bad intel: the target was supposed to be alone. She hugged her child to her chest, away from him, and the child wasn’t the target, he wasn’t the mission, he wasn’t a valuable witness, if he took the side alley it would be found fairly quickly.

He pushed her through the emergency exit door and farther down, closer to the opposite street, the child was large enough to walk fifty meters, its crying would be heard—

“Hey!”

It wasn’t Black Widow or Hawkeye; he knew that before he even turned. He caught the trash can lid (?) and assessed the attacker for a split second, before he threw the lid back at the man. He dodged, just barely.

White. Blond. 160 cm. 45 kg. Mid-twenties. Had no idea what he was dealing with.

He advanced. The man retreated. The target ran the opposite way down the alley, but she wouldn’t get far. He had to kill the man. The man was a viable witness. Any witnesses needed to be dealt with accordingly.

“You should be fuckin’ ashamed of yourself! Trying to hurt a mother and her child, you are the worst kind of villain there is!”

He grabbed the man by the neck and held him in the air. In all honestly his grip could be described as gentle, the metal arm could rip through concrete, so crushing someone’s trachea came easy. Should come easy. Why was he pausing? The man used himself as a distraction. Purposely led the soldier down the alley to give the woman and her child a few more seconds to live. It was useless. The woman would die. She was his target. He would die. He was a witness.

The man scrubbed paint over his goggles.

The concept of paint hadn’t existed to him until this moment as the smell hit his nose with the force of a punch — oil paint, how did he know what oil paint was? He heard panting and coughing, which someone shouldn’t be able to do if they were dead, because he dropped the man. He dropped the man. Why did he drop the man? He slowly raised his hand so he could tug off the goggles.

It was blue paint. Blue oil paint. He rubbed his fingers in it, watched as it coated his skin and reflected the low light. The man was collapsed on the ground in front of him wheezing, and he

_You’re gonna kill yourself with these paint fumes, Jesus, at least crack a window or somethin’_

The all-encompassing sense of _wrong_ filled him and something violent and incendiary sparked in his stomach and burned in his chest. He raised his gun and—

And he shot at the man twice and left, only to instantly question his actions. He shot _at_ the man, leaving two bullets buried in the ground. Not he shot the man, leaving two bullets buried in his skull. Why? He didn’t miss. _He didn’t miss._ He’d wasted two bullets, where he had started this mission with twelve in this clip he was now down to three. Why hadn’t he shot the man? He was a witness. No one could know. No one could know unless his Handler had specified. He’d defied orders. Why didn’t he shoot the man?

His head buzzed and it felt like something was trying to drill through his skull but he didn’t know. He didn’t _know._ He didn’t know why he hadn’t killed the man. This was wrong. What was wrong? He wandered some blocks away without any thought of to where his target went, dazed and feeling ill. He curled in on himself in a back alley and clenched the ruined goggles in his fist. The paint was still wet. It wouldn’t dry, oil paint wouldn’t dry for weeks unless it had an agent, what the hell did that even mean it wasn’t relevant to the mission.

Mission equipment damaged. He would be punished.

Mission supplies wasted. He would be punished.

Mission parameters unfilled. He would be punished.

Mission time frame exceeded. He would be punished.

Mission uncompleted. He would be punished.

Target lost. He would be punished.

Witness left alive. He would be punished.

He would be punished.

He would be punished.

He breathed. He could still smell the acrid fumes that lingered in the air even though he was away, he was far away from the man. The witness. The man would have sacrificed himself if it meant the mother and child — no, the target and the casualty — no, the child wouldn’t have — he wouldn’t have had to—

He could still hear the man’s wheezing after the soldier let him go, and he got the sudden feeling that he’d forgotten some important supplies for the mission. What had he forgotten? His Handlers had supplied him with everything he needed. It was his fault he hadn’t been able to complete the mission. His Handlers trusted him to complete the mission no matter what and he’d failed. He’d failed them. It was his fault. They trained him, gave him everything he needed, and he’d botched the mission. How could he do that to them? He would be punished for this.

 _Good_ , he thought venomously. He deserved it. He could hear the voice now, it was there when he woke up, although he couldn’t quite picture the face it belonged to. It was soothing. Constant. He just wanted a good soldier, and was disappointed when the soldier wasn’t good. The punishment was to fix the soldier. Fix the soldier. He needed to be punished. He wasn’t good. He’d failed the mission. The witness was left alive.

He opened his hand and stared at the goggles. He breathed in the smell of paint and bright splashes of color flashed in the night sky above him, smudges of oranges and reds melted into greens and purples and

_How come you laugh at me when I wanna wear green and purple together but you can paint with it huh?_

_I can paint with it because they’re secondary colors, you can’t wear them because you look like you belong in the Mystery Machine if you do and_

He stumbled farther down the alley, head reeling, and he had no idea what that was. That voice… that was the man in the alley. Why did he hear his voice? What the hell was this ‘mystery machine’? No, no, he was getting distracted, this wasn’t the… he had to complete his mission.

His orders were scattered somewhere in his brain, broken fragments of commands and voices echoing in his skull. How long had he been away? How long had it been since he had eyes on his target? Too long. Much too long. He had to — he had to complete his mission.

The smell of paint clouded the directive. He didn’t — he needed to regroup. He needed to receive orders again. He needed maintenance, and then once he was fixed, he would continue his mission. They would make sure he wouldn’t fail again. He shouldn’t have failed in the first place. _He had to complete his mission._

The Black Widow and Hawkeye had to be somewhere in the area still, he realized. What was he doing here? Here he was an easy target. So many mistakes he’d made on this mission. He definitely deserved whatever was coming to him.

He crept down the alley and slipped through the city like a disease, silent and indiscriminate. His head drifted through a fog, and it felt like there was something digging into the space right behind his eyes, burrowing deeper and deeper into his skull. The layout of the city was burned behind his eyelids, regardless of his fuzzy head, so even though he had gotten a little turned around, he found his way back to the rendezvous point fairly easily.

The doors to the back of the van opened and he felt his world tilt, because for a split second he was _sure_ that one of the men were about the hand him some furniture to unload. They grabbed him by the vest and heaved him inside, leaving that thought behind. Guns clicked around him as he sat down, the van doors slamming shut against the wind.

“Winter Soldier, mission report,” said the man in tactical gear across from him. He sounded almost bored and was the only one not currently aiming a gun at the soldier’s head.

“Mission incomplete. Target’s location is unknown. Estimated time for completion is unknown.”

The van rocked as it kept starting and stopping with traffic. Even though the walls were padded he could still hear the honking around them. Somewhere he was aware of the men glancing between themselves, unsure. He’d never failed a mission before that he could remember. He was going to be punished.

All he could smell was the paint, however, could feel it slide against his fingers. He hoped it would stain. It would help him remember. Remember the man with the blue paint. The man. The man in the alley. He had to remember the man in the alley. The man had blue paint. He was missing something important for his mission, something for the man in the alley, the blue paint, all he could smell was blue paint _you’re gonna kill yourself with these paint fumes_ he was dizzy and the honking outside the window pounded against his head, New York drivers were the worst, always honking even though you were just crossing the street and the light was still red—

The man sitting across from him slapped him hard against his head.

The man in the alley. He had to remember the man in the alley.

“Where is the target?”

“The man in the alley,” he said instead, “who was he?”

“What man?” his Handler asked sharply. “Did someone _see_ you?”

White. Blond. 160 cm. 45 kg. Mid-twenties. Had no idea what he was dealing with.

_You have no idea who the fuck you’re dealing with, do you kid?_

_Sure I do! I’m dealing with a bunch’a big stupid bullies!_

_Well come here if you’re so eager to take his place! I outta beat the shit outta you, you little freak—_

Something stabbed into his stomach and electricity coursed through his body, causing his nerves and muscles to spasm. He flailed and his fists clenched uncontrollably, blood filling his mouth from where he bit his tongue in surprise.

“We need to bring the asset in for reprogramming,” his Handler spoke into his earpiece. “He’s malfunctioning and unresponsive… No, no wiping, not before we find the witness… yes sir, he left the witness _and_ the targets alive… yes sir… yes sir… we’ll kill them ourselves if we have to… yes sir…”

Kill them?

He felt the same sense of _wrongness_ from before crawl up from his stomach to his throat, digging into his ribs. His chest constricted and he — he knew he would be punished, but the man, the man from the alley, he couldn’t, he’d forgotten something important for his mission, and the man couldn’t die, it wasn’t… he didn’t have to…

“I need to know about the man you met in the alley. Tell me everything.”

He swallowed a mouthful of blood back and narrowed his eyes.

“I _said,_ soldier, to tell me everything about the man,” his Handler said, glowering close to his face. “Or do we need to put you back in the chair and burn it out of you?”

What he said next he had absolutely no explanation for—

“No.”

—which caused the situation to deteriorate very quickly.

His Handler reared back with the taser, so he shoved him back against the wall of the van. He leapt up just before the restraints sprouted out from his seat to clamp around his ankles and torso to lock him down. The four other men in the car, excluding the driver, all jumped on him with tasers and stun guns of their own, going for his arms and legs.

He jabbed one in the stomach with his metal arm, kicking his legs out and spinning his body to throw the rest off into the hard interior of the van. The confined space limited his options, but what he needed was to get out of there. He pushed past two of the men and his hyper focus on opening the door allowed his Handler to stab him in his thigh with something, which he ignored and kicked him in the face instead. Another slammed a taser into his side as he punched through the latch on the doors, allowing them to fling open and giving him a chance to jab his teammate in the throat.

He’d meant to jump out on to the car behind the van, but his legs weren’t listening to him and instead he face planted onto the hood and windshield. He could hear the woman behind the wheel scream and both she and the driver of the van punched the brakes. He slid forward on the car and dug his fingers into the hood to keep himself upright, because otherwise his legs would have crumpled beneath him.

His Handler stood at the edge of the van and raised his gun and the soldier grabbed his throwing knife from his belt and hurled it straight at his Handler’s eye. In the time it took for the knife to reach his Handler, he became aware of three things:

  1. His body, besides his left arm, was mostly paralyzed.
  2. He couldn’t run.
  3. The punishment for this was going to be unbelievable.



The gun went off as his Handler screamed, and there was nothing the soldier could do to block the bullets, though thankfully his aim was erratic. One bullet pierced through his right bicep, and it somehow missed both the humerus bone and the deep brachial artery. Another buried itself in his abdomen, but due to his vest it was mostly stopped — it was a .357 magnum in a snub-nose revolver, so it was able to bypass the armor he was wearing and dig into his flesh approximately five centimeters.

He swung to the right side of the car he’d landed on while the agents were still scrambling and pulled open the door. It took him approximately 16 seconds longer than it should have since he literally had to drag his body with his left arm and at this point he practically couldn’t feel his legs at all.

The girl (Asian, black hair, 170 cm, 66 kg, teenager) peeked out from where she had ducked behind the steering wheel. In one hand she held her cellphone so it pointed out the partly shattered windshield, probably recording the situation, the other reaching back behind the drivers seat of the car where a bow and a quiver of arrows lay.

“Put that down and drive,” he ordered.

“What?”

They looked back at the van, where two men where now getting out, guns raised.

“Shit! Hold on!”

She slammed on the gas and turned the wheel, dropping her phone to the ground. The tires spun out and around, and luckily her car was small, so it was able to clear the van, nearly managing to hit the one of his teammates in the process. Gunshots splattered into the body of her car, shattering her back windshield.

“Shit shit shit shit shit…” she mumbled in a constant stream under her breath, white knuckled grip on the wheel.

“Turn left here,” he said while readying his gun and hoped that her reflexes were good.

She yanked the wheel to the left without slowing down, and if she kept this up, they might just make it out of here alive. He dragged his body upward with his left arm, wedging himself between the headrests and resting his head on one of them so he could aim properly. It brought him uncomfortably close to the girl, his right arm little more than dead weight brushing against her. He would have to allow it.

“Turn right.”

He shot two bullets through the windshield as they turned, where one of them buried itself into the driver’s collarbone. It was a damn tough shot since approximately 95% of his body was not committed to moving, and he was almost sad that there was no one around to appreciate it. Almost. He wasn’t programmed with such arbitrary feelings.

“Left,” he said, easing back into the front seat, keeping a grip on the handle above the door to keep from lurching side to side.

“Here, take the wheel, I’ll shoot their tires out with my arrows!”

“My body’s paralyzed.”

She side eyed him. “You’re _kidding_ me!”

“Right.”

He had one bullet left in his clip. He couldn’t waste it. The time it would take to reload one-handed if he missed was too much to chance.

“Left.”

He waited for his shot, breathing out evenly and counting his heartbeats, watching the bright lights pass by, seeing the streets map out in his head. He knew where he was going in this city. He could see it so clearly rushing past. He knew. He _knew._

“Right.”

He knew the man in the alley.

“Left then hard right.”

She sighed, but kept up with his instructions. So did the van.

“You know, this isn’t really how I wanted to spend my Tuesday night!” she yelled as more bullets dented her trunk. It wouldn’t be long before they actually managed to hit her gas tank. He couldn’t afford drag this out.

Thankfully, her car was a little Volkswagen Beetle, so they had the advantage of size.

“Turn right up here.”

“This is a one-way and we’re going the wrong way!” she yelled back but turned nonetheless.

There was a grocery store up this way that they could use to lose them. They could keep up speed down this narrow street and not hit anything, but the van didn’t care about clipping side mirrors. He had to act now if his plan was going to work.

“Turn left. Then turn right into the parking lot.”

He was starting to get feeling back into his toes.

“Go left around the lot, but don’t leave out the other side. Go straight then go back behind the store.”

“That sounds crazy, but I’m trusting you, so if you get us killed it’s your fault!”

He pulled himself up to take aim again through her broken back windshield. With the last bullet, he took out one of their front tires.

“Why didn’t you do that five minutes ago?!”

“Go through that,” he said, gesturing to a break in the chain link fence once they came to the back of the parking lot. He had no explanation on how he knew it would be there. Both of her side mirrors broke off in the process, but she made it through without any time to spare. The van skidded to a stop just behind them, unable to go through the gap without totaling the car on the metal poles.

“Go through the alley. Turn right.”

“Won’t that take us back to where we were?” she asked but turned anyway.

He led her to double back for five blocks, circling the grocery store before branching off down a different direction. It gave him time to reload his clip, his body rolling back and forth beyond his control with the motion of the car making it even more difficult.

“Shit!” she screamed and slammed on the breaks and swerved hard to the left, throwing him against the dashboard. They spun out to avoid another car that had pulled up from nowhere, driven by his Handler. The knife was still embedded in his eye.

“You got that gun reloaded, because we’re gonna need it! Shoot out his tires or—”

Time slowed as he raised his gun and watched his Handler’s face contort in anger, blood spilling down his face, and raising a gun of his own. His Handler was saying something, he could see his lips move and he nearly put the gun down, nearly let his Handler shoot the car and the girl beside him but he—

He fired the gun, lodging a bullet between his eyes.

“—or something! Jesus!” she punched the gas, burning rubber in her little Beetle, and sped the opposite way from the car.

“Oh my god, I’m an accomplice to a murder, you just _murdered_ that guy what the fuck? Like I know he was gonna murder us but oh my god, I’m the getaway driver, I’m—”

The gun slipped from his metal fingers, bile crawling up his throat. He just killed his Handler. He just killed his. He just. He just killed his.

“Who _were_ those guys?” she asked.

He didn’t answer.

“Oh no, you’re not allowed to pull this bull shit. You’re not allowed to fall onto my car, pull me into a gunfight-slash-car chase, and then not tell me anything!”

He stared straight ahead.

“I mean it! God, I get enough of this from — from someone else, I don’t need it from you too. I can handle myself—”

She gunned it through a yellow light that turned red before she made it across the intersection.

“—and you owe me at least for wrecking my car—”

“Slow down,” he murmured, his voice sounding distant and fuzzy.

“—so you should tell me what the fuck is going on because now I’m involved.”

He tested out moving his legs, which were still mostly useless. The paralyzer wouldn’t wear off completely for approximately another 65 minutes. He should have enough mobility in his legs to walk back in about 20 minutes. It would be slow and painful, but he could do it.

“Don’t pull the silent treatment on me. Without me you’d be dead! I mean, besides, I’m _practically_ an Avenger. I can help!”

He didn’t understand people. He was pretty sure this was the opposite way of how you’re supposed to act when some random stranger gets you shot at. But she kept talking, her voice eating at his ears while something akin to television static rolled over his mind, numbing him to what was around him. Nothing about this felt real. He wasn’t real.

“Are you gonna make me name evil organizations until I get it right? Because if you don’t think I will you then are greatly mistaken.”

He slumped against the window, staring at the gun that lay at his feet. He was going to be punished for this, he knew, but the thought came to him distantly, like someone was shouting at him over a ravine. Maybe he was actually falling down the ravine, and someone was shouting at him from above. Down, down, the wind whistled in his ears, and he was drowning, sinking further, further.

He killed his Handler. He was going to be punished. He killed his Handler. It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real. He followed orders, not… They programmed him for absolute obedience, so what was this? What was he doing? His mission had been simple. Kill the target. Leave no witnesses. And he had done neither. He would be punished. The thought screamed at him through the wind and static.

“Hey, buddy? You still in there?”

He would be punished beyond anything he’d ever felt before.

“Buddy, hey, c’mon, I was just kidding about the goose thing.”

He did not remember before.

“Turn right down this alley then stop,” he said thickly, his mouth full of cotton.

He had to right this. He had to find the man in the alley and kill him.

She slowed, hesitating, watching him. The car behind them honked its horn and caused her to jump, finally pulling into the alley. She turned off the car, throwing them into sharp silence, the only sound was the engine ticking as it cooled. He’d lost count of how many minutes he had left before he could walk again, but he was going to have to try anyway.

“Wait—” she said as he opened the door. He stumbled out, his legs alight with pain and numbness, and fell against the brick wall of the building. The distorted voice came back, drumming against his skull. He had to take care of the witness. He had to complete his mission.

“I have a team _,_ ” she said in a rush, hurrying alongside him as he leaned and staggered against the wall. She had the quiver slung on her back and the bow in her hand. “We’re pretty good, if I do say so myself — and we can _help_ you. I don’t know who you are or who they were, but I know those guys are bad news and I know you’re probably going to be in a lot of trouble for the whole stabby-shooty-car chase thing and if you come with me we can figure out a plan, ’cause Patriot is really smart and I’ll sure he’ll come up with something and if not then America will punch them into another dimension — and I mean that literally — and I can’t in good conscious just let you wander around in the cold after all that — will you at least pretend to listen to me?”

“I will deal with them. Go to your team.”

“You’ve been shot twice and have been tranquilized.”

“Injuries are negligible. The paralyzer will wear off soon. _Leave._ ”

“Do you think you’re doing me a favor? ’Cause you’re absolutely not. If I leave you now, I’m gonna have nightmares for weeks thinking I left you for dead.”

“This is not a favor. A favor would be killing you now so they don’t get to you first.”

He stopped, slumping against the bricks and stared right at her. He had to get rid of her as soon as possible, and if he could convince her to do it on her own so he didn’t actually have to kill her, then that was for the better. Her eyes, though, were wide and earnest, mouth set into a stubborn frown. She had no idea what she was getting into. What he had brought her into.

_Don’t look at me like that, Jesus Christ, you know I wasn’t about to let you take on those three guys—_

“Jesus Christ, Mr. Dramatic, I’m just trying to help you out here.”

_—not by yourself, punk._

“I’m a hero.”

_I back you up._

“It’s what I do.”

_It’s what I do._

“Let me help you.”

_Let me help you._

“I’m going to go find a man and put a bullet between his eyes because he impeded my mission, like you are now. Go be a hero somewhere else or I’ll put a bullet between your eyes too.”

She swallowed, surreptitiously putting some distance between them, steadying her balance and rolling onto the balls of her feet. She knew how to fight, then, at least.

“You’ve already killed that one guy. I watched you throw a _knife_ into his _eye_. I’m not stupid. I know you’re dangerous. But so are those men. I just don’t want any more deaths tonight, alright?”

“They won’t kill me,” he said. Reprogramming was a type of death, though. He wondered if they would send him to kill this girl after he went back.

“Then maybe it’s not you I’m worried about, buddy!”

They locked into a staring contest. She broke first.

“Fine,” she said, throwing up her hands in defeat. “Go be the anti-hero or whatever. I’ll be over here not dying or whatever.”

He narrowed his eyes because it couldn’t be that easy — and he was right, she tried to follow him as he left. The few minutes delay their conversation caused was a few more minutes where his body burned through the paralyzer, giving him more mobility, and although he was still inhibited, he was nothing if not good at disappearing. He was also lucky this girl was still an amateur by his standards; he would have been in worse trouble if it were the Black Widow following him.

Ten minutes later it came to him, not like a punch to a gut, but more like a gentle knocking and someone going ‘hey, buddy? You have no idea where you’re going.’ Because he didn’t. He knew where he was, in Bed-Stuy, but had no idea where to go from here. He breathed into the cold night air, watching it mist in front of him, and considered his options.

  1. Go back to the rendezvous point and regroup.
  2. Go back to where he last saw the target and trace her steps.
  3. Continue on to try to find the witness.



His first option was not preferable, although it was what he should do, what the mission directive was pounding against his head, attempting to drown out everything else. He could go after the target, but by now it was likely that the Black Widow and Hawkeye had found her and took her to a safe house. It wouldn’t be impossible to find, but in his current state it wouldn’t be advised. Even when the paralyzer did wear off, he’d been shot twice. He needed maintenance. Any type of combat should be avoided until the body had necessary repairs done.

That left him with finding the witness. Finding one person with little to nothing to go on in one of the biggest cities in the world. That should be easy, right?

~*~ 

Over two hours of wandering around in the cold later, he didn’t feel like he was getting any closer. He was feeling… _something,_ though, which he couldn’t quite explain, like how he found that spot behind the grocery store.

He crossed the street at one point, and didn’t know why until someone else walked past the two-story townhouse he’d avoided and what sounded like three high-pitched dogs started yapping as loud as they could against the front door.

He’d gone on the search for a jacket, or something to cover his left arm so he’d stop attracting stares, and was _sure_ that there was a store somewhere over in this one area, but he ended up circling around about ten blocks and there was no store in sight.

(He found a thrift store twenty minutes later once he stopped trying to look for it. He didn’t know if he’d been right before about his feeling or it was purely that there were thrift stores everywhere these days.)

He kept heading decidedly southeast, melting in shadows and vaulting across rooftops, because the witness was not a wealthy man, and therefore would not live somewhere like Downtown Brooklyn or across the bridge in Manhattan. The lower class lived in the more Flatbush/Brownsville neighborhoods, so that was where the witness lived, he was sure of it. He did not know why he was sure of it, nor did he know why his legs carried him where they did.

(He couldn’t give up. He had to complete the mission. If he could complete the mission then the punishment wouldn’t be so bad, then maybe they’d forgive him, maybe—)

It was dumb luck. It had to be. He saw someone (white, blond, 160cm, 45kg, mid-twenties) stumbling against the opposite buildings in the same old tan coat, and no. It couldn’t be that easy.

He hardly had to make the effort to follow him, since the witness was not paying any attention to his surroundings, hunched over and clutching his chest. (Something… he’d forgotten something for his mission.) He followed the witness for another twelve blocks with something flittering in and out of his peripheral vision, slipping just out of his reach like trying to grasp the shadows. The man from the alley turned into one of the short, skinny apartment complexes, pausing at the bottom of the stairs. He took the outside stairway to reach the back end of the building, and the man clung onto the railing for support, his legs unsteady. As he prowled closer, he could hear the hitching breath, the pained wheezing, and he followed the witness up the stairs.

He skipped the third step because it squeaked. It always had. The man from the alley led the way, coming to his door. That door was terrible, was always getting stuck, they had to contact the landlord—

_Our landlord’s 64, I’m not gonna bother him about something that ain’t broke_

And he followed the man from the alley into the apartment, since he’d forgotten to lock the door. He was standing over near his bed, and he walked up behind him, pulling out his gun.

“Try anything and you’re dead, and so is anyone who tries to help you.”

The man from the alley froze, hands hovering over his sketchbook. The smell of paint was overwhelming in here, along with something else that he couldn’t quite name, something was…

“Turn around.”

The man from the alley did. He looked surprised, blue eyes impossibly wide. He blinked a few times, eyelashes fluttering, before he softened and relaxed. It started small, but soon his grin was wide and toothy, and somewhere the soldier ached worse than he could ever remember feeling.

“Bucky,” he said warmly, eyes glittering in the light.

He pulled the trigger and the man from the alley’s body jerked, blood and brain matter shooting out and splattering the bed and wall. The body fell to the floor with a dull thud. His mission was partly complete. He had to return and receive maintenance. The blood pooled around the body, spreading out towards the soldier’s shoes, distracting him. He dropped hard to his knees, reaching out tentatively.

The man’s glassy eyes turned and locked onto his.

“How could you do this?” he asked.

The soldier had no answer. He could see through the man’s head to the floor behind him, his skin pallid, dark circles bloomed under his eyes, his lips thin and colorless.

“You should be fuckin’ ashamed of yourself!” he spat. “You are the worst kind of villain there is!”

He stayed where he was, the man from the alley’s blood soaking into his pants (mission supplies wasted he would be punished _he would be punished_ ) and stared and stared at the man’s face that went slack, his mouth parted open in surprise. _Bucky_ , he’d said, the man from the alley had seen the soldier’s face and had called him _Bucky_ and now he lie cold and stiff on the ground, eyes the color of the sky that wouldn’t see that sky ever again (the sky was bright blue and it blinded him, scorching into his eyes as he stared upwards, someone dragging his body and this was how he was going to die), the soldier had taken that from him, had taken _everything_ from him and how could he; the soldier opened his palm and found the man from the alley’s inhaler, the important piece that he’d forgotten for the mission and somewhere deep inside he felt like he was _falling_ —

The door opened and the Black Widow entered, snapping him abruptly back to the present.

That's right. He didn't actually. The man from the alley was still alive. Something slipped through him like a tall glass of water on a hot day, and he wasn’t sure how he knew that comparison. He didn’t feel the heat or cold.

He'd been brought out of the cell into another room, where they’d cuffed him to a chair using shackles with strength sapping capability. His ankles and torso were strapped into a high-density metal chair, which in turn was bolted to the floor. He right wrist had a little more mobility, being cuffed to the table with about twenty centimeters of give. The strength sapping shackles lived up to their name, however, and he couldn't have broken away even if he wanted to. The room was lined with one-way mirrors and had cameras in the corners. He barely gave it another thought, though — the concept of privacy was beyond him.

The Black Widow strode into the room. She slid into the opposite chair, staring him down. Any intimidation tactics she might try wouldn't work. Hadn’t worked. He'd been through worse.

He couldn't remember his own name, but he could remember the pain. They wanted him to remember the pain.

She reached down into a small brief case, taking out several thick manila folders and placing them side-by-side on the cold, dark table.

“I believe you've been waiting long enough. How about we start from the beginning.”

Her voice was low and husky, her lips wrapping around the words differently than they had in Russian. He figured using English was just a courtesy to those watching.

“I'm going to walk you through a scenario. You're going to close your eyes and follow along.”

He stared at her.

“Do I need to remind you of what is at stake here? You haven't been receptive to our previous questioning attempts. I'm hoping this one proceeds differently.”

Somewhere inside he felt this deep-rooted need to keep his mouth shut. _Give them nothing, don't let them use anything against you._

He had agreed to this, though. The man from the alley — Steve Rogers, his name was Steve Rogers — had asked. If he concentrated, he could feel the phantom spike of man from the alley’s heartbeat against his flesh hand. The man from the alley didn't lie about this. The Black Widow did, though. He couldn't trust anything that came out of her mouth, but he closed his eyes anyway. Nothing they did to him with his eyes closed was worse if they were open, and the rest of his senses went into hyper drive anyway to compensate. Sometimes anticipation was more unbearable than the surprise.

“Good. Now, I'm going to describe to you a scene. Picture it as best you can.

“It’s hot outside, an intense, dry heat. You're surrounded by harsh brush on scraggly mountainside and the dirt is dull and dry. Sharp rocks litter the ground. The sky overhead is bright blue and hurts to look at directly. The sun bears down and it's so hot out, even though the day has just started, and you're sweating already. You clothes are well worn and even though your armor digs into your shoulders, it’s familiar.”

He pictured it easily, even though he had never seen mountains before.

“You're thirsty,” she continued, her voice staying steady and soft, and he compulsively swallowed, “but you find some shade from the building you’re guarding, which offers a little relief from the sun. You're waiting, looking out for something, but you don't know it yet. You hold the rifle in your hands, feeling the grip and the warm metal. It’s boring so far, the waiting, but you’re used to it by now.

“And then an explosion goes off. You can’t see it, it’s on the other side of the building, but you can feel it. The vibrations from the ground shake you and you can see the dark plume of smoke stand out starkly from the blue of the sky. You stay by your post, the weight of your rifle a comfort as you look down the scope. You hear the distant rattle of gunfire and explosions and you don’t know if all of your fellow soldiers are going to make it through this one. That’s the game you played, that Russian roulette. Not everyone comes back from the war.”

She paused.

“You didn’t.”

Her words pricked the back of his mind, raising the small hairs on the back of his neck. His fingers twitched slightly, looking for the phantom gun.

“Someone manages to sneak up on you. You don't know how, you had been vigilant, and the security system in place should have been triggered. The man is large and fast, much faster than you, and you're overwhelmed. His right hand had been replaced with a metal claw, something harder than steel. It could crack through concrete. You unload your gun, but he’s fast enough to deflect the bullets. He manages to overcome you, and with that metal claw, slices through your left arm, severing it from your body.”

His empty shoulder socket twitched slightly.

“Open your eyes.”

In front of him on the table was a drawn sketch of a man. He was white, bald, mid-forties to mid-fifties, height and weight indeterminable. He had scars on the left side of his face that looked like cracks on a sidewalk, with a monocle over his right eye.

“You lost consciousness from the blood loss,” the Black Widow continued, watching him closely. “They would have needed to stop the bleeding and fast, probably with some kind of tourniquet. This man would not have been alone.”

She paused again, and it occurred to him belatedly that she was waiting for him to confirm or deny what she had said. The blue sky though, he was pretty sure he remembered that, remembered staring upwards into the blinding sun. The memory, if it even was one, was useless, but he’d promised the man from the alley. He didn’t need to be reminded of the stakes.

“I don’t,” he said softly, gesturing to the picture, “but I… I was dragged. Somewhere.” He furrowed his brows, trying to think of the words. “I remember… staring up and thinking I was dying.”

“You don’t remember your arm getting severed?”

More images filtered into his head, but he didn’t think they were what she was looking for.

“They cut part off,” he said, miming with his hand the place where they took the whirring sharp tools.

“You remember that.”

He nodded once.

“You were awake, then, for the entire surgical procedure?”

He nodded again.

“That arm is highly sophisticated, giving you a full range of motion and the ability to feel pressure. The pain of attaching those circuits to your nerves would have been unimaginable.”

He stared, and she raised one of her eyebrows slightly. He was expected to answer, but he didn’t know how. He was here to give her information about what he knew. This was irrelevant. She was different than his Handlers, though. With them he could get a read, he knew the right answers, he knew what to say to avoid punishment (well, sometimes, if he were lucky, since more often than not they punished him anyway). She kept her expression perfectly blank and he couldn’t discern what she was truly after, what answers would please her most. With his Handlers he could usually predict pain. With her, he would never see it coming.

She reached into one of the manila folders and pulled a picture of his Handler. He felt the whistling in his ears again. He’d almost managed to convince himself that that hadn’t happened, he hadn’t killed his Handler. He couldn’t have. It went against protocol.

“This man was found dead in his car two weeks ago. He had a knife lodged in his eye and a bullet in his skull. Did you kill him?"

He knew this was something that happened. He could see it clearly in his mind's eye, could watch as the bullet left his gun and the cars skidded on the road to miss each other, but it still didn't feel real. _It couldn't have happened._

It went against protocol. He nodded. He had killed him anyway.

“Why?"

He stayed silent, and her eyebrows dipped together just slightly. “How about you begin with that night instead. You managed to lose Hawkeye and I, and left into the alley with your targets. Someone tried to stop you and you let him. Why?"

The paint. But that wasn't the right answer. Why didn't he kill the man in the alley? She waited on his answer, the people behind the windows waited and he didn't have the right answer and he was going to be punished.

“He was a witness,” he finally said, but this concept was beyond words that he could fathom.

“Witnesses should be dealt with accordingly. The child and the man were witnesses.”

“The child was not a viable witness,” he said, and he was going to be punished for correcting her. “No mission supplies needed.”

“Meaning you would not have killed the child.”

“Bad intel. The target was supposed to be alone. No mission supplies needed," he repeated.

“The man you met in the alley,” she continued after pausing minutely, “was a viable witness. He saw enough to identify you, and yet he's still alive. You held his throat in your hand and you let him go while he was still breathing. Twice, now. That wasn't an accident.”

He didn’t know how to answer. She waited, but thinking about holding the man from the alley’s throat in his hand made him—

“ _Soldat,_ ” she said and something clicked hard in his mind. “Mission report.”

The chain on the cuff around his wrist clinked as arm thudded against his thigh. Mind numbing static took over and he heard words but it didn’t sound like they were coming from him.

“Mission incomplete. Target’s location is unknown. Estimated time for completion is unknown.”

“What is the mission?”

“Kill the woman responsible for hindering the plans. Create a better world by shooting her in the head. Do not let yourself be seen. Complete the mission at all costs.”

His tongue was heavy in his mouth and would not obey him.

“What are the plans?”

“Make a better world. We’re going to save the people of this world, but to do our part you have to do yours.”

“How are they going to save them?”

“I do not question orders.”

“After the alley, what happened?”

“Proceeded back to the rendezvous point.”

“How many men?”

“Six.”

“What did they ask you?”

“Mission report.”

“How did they react when you told them you lost the target?”

He blinked a few times, the static clearing a little through the panic that shot through him.

“ _Soldat._ ”

He twitched, the command lodging the lump from his throat.

“Kill the witness.”

“You were to kill the witness?”

He nodded once.

 _We ask you answer — do you_ want _to get tased again?!_

“They wanted you to clean up your mess,” she clarified for him, and did not get out the taser. “And what did you say?”

He swallowed, the room suddenly feeling much smaller than it did before.

“No,” he whispered.

“You told them ‘no’.”

Thoughts and ideas scattered in his brain, and he couldn’t hold on to any of them. He felt off kilter, like someone had dislocated all of his joints and left him like that, all jagged edges and unnatural angles.

“Burn it,” he blurted.

“Burn what?” she asked. “The picture?” she paused, waiting for his reaction. “The information?”

He scrunched his eyebrows together. Close, but. But.

“Burn the information. What information? The information you had?”

He twitched.

“They wanted to burn the information out of you, about the witness,” she said.

It wasn’t a question. He couldn’t look her in the eye.

“I’m going to lay out pictures,” she said after it became clear he wasn’t going to answer. “If you have any inkling of recognition, let me know.”

She reached into the manila folders and started setting out pictures three at a time side by side. He stared down at the men in the pictures, but didn't get a spark of anything. After a moment she picked them up, replacing them with three more pictures. Once she picked up the ninth picture, he became acutely aware of being watched, that this was all up to him and if he didn't cough up what he knew about his Handlers, he was going to upset the man from the alley.

She placed more pictures down, one after another. He stared at them, but nothing sparked like she wanted. He picked out one man (white, 60’s, balding, gray hair) to put something down, but he only got a vague sense of familiarity. And that didn’t mean anything to him, since how many men like that had he seen in his life? She hadn’t put down anyone on his team yet. Either she was going to surprise him with them to throw him off his balance, or she didn’t know who they were. _He_ didn’t even really know and that was the crux of it. Would he even be able to pick out the people he worked with when it came down to it? Was this going to be helpful at all to—?

The next man whose picture she laid down made bile rise in his throat and he dry heaved. He quickly slapped the picture over so he didn’t have to look at his face.

“Who is this man to you?” the Black Widow asked.

Words escaped him, and for a moment he was entirely unable to process what she had asked him. His body acted against him, twitching slightly and sweating, while his brain hit some kind of roadblock, unable to express what was happening. Who was this man? He didn’t know. Who was this man to him? Fear. It was the only thing clear to him, like spiders crawling up his throat and his stomach tightening itself into knots. He worked his mouth, trying to get it to open, to spit out some of the spiders and get it out, he needed to get _out_ of here.

“Soldier,” she said, her voice calm, “who is this man?”

He made a small, pitiful sound that was more like a wheeze than anything else. He should respond. That’s what she wanted. Something was squeezing his throat, and that just… this _man_ was… he couldn’t but she needed to understand, needed to understand why this man—

He tapped on the table with a trembling finger.

TAP-SLIDE-TAP-SLIDE… TAP-TAP-SLIDE… SLIDE-TAP… TAP-TAP…*

His arm froze up, and everything seemed to slow down as something boomed in his ears, the static in his mind distorting the words, _now, soldier, you’re doing something bad, and I’m upset. You know I don’t like it when you do things that upset me._

His arm moved, his fingers bracing themselves against the tabletop with his elbow straight up in the air, and he tensed to push down—

“ _Soldat_ mission report, _now_.”

The arm thudded down hard as the static punched to the forefront of his mind again.

“Mission incomplete. Target’s location is unknown. Estimated time for completion is unknown.”

He blinked a few times, and he wasn’t sure where he was at first, before it started filtering to him in pieces. He was in the interrogation room with the Black Widow. He couldn’t remember the last question she asked him. He didn’t know how long it had been since she had asked it.

“Are you with me now?” she asked. 

He furrowed his brow, not sure where else he had been. “Yes.”

“Good. I’m going to lay down more pictures. If anyone sparks a memory, let me know.”

The pictures she laid down were more varied in size and quality than the previous ones. Some were alive, some obviously very dead. Men, women, even a few children, ages and races varied significantly. He wondered if he killed them, if they had a good idea who and what his mission list contained. He watched her place them in different piles, the largest of those in which he showed no recognition, the middle had those who he picked out, but was unsure, and the pile on the left had those who he definitely knew (currently only one picture, face down.)

The next couple rounds had his team in them, their pictures taken from the autopsy table. He killed them. They threatened the man from the alley (who was in front of him, standing down his team with a gun “he is _not your weapon_ ,” he had spat) and he couldn’t let them hurt the man from the alley _Steve Rogers his name was Steve Rogers_ small and breakable Steve Rogers and the soldier hadn’t hesitated that time, like he had done with his Handler. They went down quick and dirty, and he didn’t care about the bodies he left behind. Rogers would never be able to return to the apartment, since they would be after him now. The original target was gone, surely, in some faraway safe house known to only a few. He might not have killed the witness due to a glitch in his programming, but there were many others without the glitch that would follow through with the mission. Others that would consider the child not a waste of mission supplies.

Black Widow set down in a group of three, one picture of a child. She was approximately 10-12 years old, early adolescence, with dark brown hair and eyes, smiling at the camera, her pale skin washed out from the flash. Black Widow went to take the picture away, but he jerked his hand, sliding the picture back to him.

“Do you know her?” she asked.

Something was scratching at the back of his mind, something just slipping through his fingers.

“She screamed,” he knew suddenly.

“She screamed,” Black Widow repeated, “why?”

He looked up at the Black Widow. Had he killed her?

“If she screamed,” she went on, “she must have seen you.”

The picture on the table morphed suddenly, the eyes widened with fear and her mouth opened in a gasp, before letting out a high-pitched scream that rang in his ears. More pieces filtered through, not in any sort of order, and none that made much sense.

“She had ducks on her pajamas,” he said. If she had pajamas, then she must have been asleep. She must have been in bed and “she woke up, and she saw me, and she screamed.”

“You were standing over her. You must have been standing by her bed for a while. Why did she wake up?”

He tried to visually rewind the memory in his head. He’d been watching her. No, more accurately, he had been hesitating. She had ducks on her pajamas.

“She was cold,” he said, “I… left the window open.”

“So she’s cold, she wakes up and sees you, and screams. Someone must have heard that.”

He looked up from where his eyes had been locked on the girl’s picture back to the Black Widow. The girl had ducks on her pajamas. The ducks stained red as he watched her bleed out from the gun shot wounds on her torso. The man burst in (mother, age 38, 73 kg) and the daughter ran to him and the soldier knew they had to flee.

“I didn’t do that,” he said and tapped on the picture. “I didn’t _do_ that.”

“Who did?” 

He tilted his head unconsciously, trying to listen. He could… something was in his ear, and it took a long moment before he could make out what it was repeating.

“Asset malfunction. Disengage and take out the targets.”

“Why did you malfunction?”

There must be some disconnect between his brain and his mouth, because knowing _what_ was much easier that trying to explain _why_. He knew he didn’t kill the girl, knew it the same way he missed when shooting at the man from the alley, but he couldn’t explain his behavior. Why was he even telling her anything at all? Why was he so compelled to do what the man from the alley asked in the first place? What information was the Black Widow able to procure from this anyway? He hadn’t been that useful at all. And, the crutch of it was, he honestly _couldn’t_ be helpful. He didn’t know. He didn’t _know_.

He scowled. This was getting them nowhere. This wasn’t an effective way to procure information, and he _knew_ she knew that. He was being unhelpful in any to actually get anywhere in dismantling his team and to finding his other Handlers. Of course, he didn’t have any idea of everything she already knew; it was possible she was just testing him. They should just cut to the chase and bring out the big guns, like pulling out fingernails or flaying off the skin on the bottoms of his feet and then making him run for miles on a treadmill barefoot. The good stuff. Not this pussyfooting around the subject.

“Knowing what caused the malfunction is none of my concern. They fixed me.”

He wondered how far he could push before he started getting punished. 

“Questioning me on past malfunctions is pointless.”

“Is it?”

“The information I’ve provided is useless.”

“There are all different kinds of information.”

“I did not make the plans.”

“No, you just shot whatever they pointed you at.”

Something about that unsettled him, but he didn’t let it show. He still hadn’t gotten punished. The Black Widow had yet to move from her seat and no men wearing hospital masks and plastic gloves came to rip apart his body. He hated it. It was the anticipation building. His scowl deepened. He just wanted the pain to start. The pain was familiar.

(The ducks were bloody and they made his hand bloody when he touched them.)

“The asset does not question the plans,” he repeated. He didn’t care if his missions were good or bad people. They weren’t people. He just wanted to be a good soldier. He had to do what they said. They just wanted a good soldier. He shoved the picture of the girl away.

(Her body was still warm. Her eyes were blank.)

“You did question. You killed six men. You killed them to protect Steve Rogers.”

He wanted to look away at the name, but he stared her down. It always made them uncomfortable when the weapon stared back.

“And then you broke his arm, cracked his head open. He’s been nice enough to visit you every day and you pay him back by strangling him again.”

He gritted his teeth and has the inexplicable urge to claw his skin off.

“You’re worse,” he spat.

She raised one perfect eyebrow. “I’m worse?”

“You give him _hope_.”

The Black Widow studied him for a moment.

“What hope did they give you?”

He opened his mouth and he honestly didn’t know what was going to come out of it until it did.

“We need you to do it one last time."

End. They gave him hope that there would be an end. Because what better way to make the unwilling willing than to dangle a glass of water in front of a man in a desert? Do this one last mission, then you can go rest. Take this one last shot, and we won’t need you anymore. Kill this one last person, and we’ll kill you after. And they lied, every single time. There was always _one more_. At some point, he got so singularly focused on the glass of water dangling just out of reach that the world could have swallowed him alive and he wouldn’t have even noticed, the bodies dropped at his feet and he didn’t even care. He thought he did care, at one point.

(They have to shock him into unconsciousness because he won’t let go of her body.)

“What else did they tell you?”

He looked up and he felt like he was seeing her for the first time. Nothing had changed from getting away from his Handlers, he realized, because here he was, sitting in front of his new one. He was never going to get the glass. They were going to make him wear his feet into the ground chasing after it, suck him dry until he’s not longer of any use, then fix him back up and make him keep going.

He thought of Rogers, of how thin and pale he was, the wracking cough that shook his whole body, the rattling in his lungs. The cast on his left arm and the stiches on his forehead, the bruised skin on his face and throat. And he had the audacity to look at the asset and _smile_.

He fell away from himself, having some awareness that he was moving his mouth and tongue and throat in the way that formed words and that somewhere hopefully his brain was aligning those words into something that was halfway coherent, but he left. Slowly everything drained away and he watched the glass sitting so close yet so far, the beads of water dripping down the sides as his words dried up.

“Thank you for your cooperation,” she said, and he knew what came next.

They walked him out of the interrogation room, his bare feet unable to feel the coldness of the floor. Six agents surrounded him, plus the Black Widow on his left. It’s a long walk. He stared down at the ground and started counting. How many steps would it take before he was locked up again?

He looked up at the cell doors, not really seeing anything. Even if the Black Widow hadn’t been lying, if he was really going to be moved in exchange for the information he gave, it did matter. A cell was a cell was a cell, and they didn’t always have four walls.

Some part of his mind insisted that he was tired, but that was incorrect. He wasn’t programmed to feel exhaustion

**Author's Note:**

> *Bucky was tapping in morse code P-U-N-I....
> 
> welp. i hope it was worth the wait???
> 
> the next part will be longer and more focused on steve and bucky's relationship (well, rebuilding it kinda) and Sam will return and everything will be gay - i mean great. no i mean both lmao
> 
> i'm agentrainycarter on tumblr!!!!


End file.
